


To Set a Meal

by leslielol



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Angst, Drunkenness, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-08-22 22:26:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8303464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leslielol/pseuds/leslielol
Summary: Barba loses a case. Months of work and hours of testimony--gone. It’s easy to lose track of an evening, after that.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Slashy and I challenged one another to write miserable things. We both found this _inexplicably difficult._ Here’s mine.

A case is lost. 

The terminology doesn't quite fit; Barba hasn’t misplaced it, but the thing seems to have never left the courtroom. He knows how he managed the failure: enough members of the jury didn't take it home with them, didn't lose themselves to those awful details, didn't sympathize with the victim more than they identified with the perpetrator. 

So, it's lost. With every weak effort Benson pushes on him--and indeed, that Barba accepts--this isn’t so unusual. He’s not so often blindsided. 

But, now. Hearing those meager charges stack up, but fall short of his true aim. There will be prison time, but no vindication. His face burns red in inconceivable shame. He can scarcely lift his gaze from the floor, let alone raise it to those who had once looked to him for salvation. 

Months of work and hours of testimony--gone. It’s easy to lose track of an evening, after that. 

He does what is necessary, first: he apologizes. 

To the victims and their families, his voice is low and conciliatory. Theirs are empty, numbed and tired. They’d had so little hope to begin with, but proceedings necessitated Barba’s acting like they had a chance at all. People aren’t sheep; they won’t be marched to the witness stand without seeing better odds than a guillotine. Now they were stripped of even the fantasy he’d provided, the overblown notion that someone should _care,_ and someone should _pay._

Barba manages that much in the courthouse halls, because these poor people are too broken down to make it any farther. They’ll retire to their homes in the city and be lost to him, he hopes, because he's never doubted his selfish tendencies, only kept them quiet. 

He doesn’t visit the latest victim, who is still comatose in her hospital bed. He thinks it’s obvious she won’t receive any justice and better, maybe, that she doesn’t have to know. 

-

His carries his work home with him and deposits it on his kitchen counter and coffee table, and any spillover meets the floor. He stares at it, searching uselessly for his errors, those places he came up short and others paid for it with their whole sense of self.

Sometimes, the unintentional wrong he does is unimaginable. He feels like a bumbling toddler with the nuclear codes. 

He stares at the various crime scene photos, police reports, and evidence. The images and visuals are damning--so much so, that it makes less and less sense that he could have lost. 

A glass of scotch finds its way into his hand, and is refiled several times over. Even drunk, Barba sees the matter clearly. He draws brutal convictions with his thoughts, but supposes that’s of little good, now. 

He showers for twenty minutes, under water as hot as he can bear it. He grits his teeth and aggravates his skin, searing it pink. Several times over he repeats this torture: he scrubs himself raw, then lets himself cook. 

As he towels off, Barba is disappointed when his skin doesn’t slough off in meaty curls, or otherwise detach from the bone. Another failure on his part. 

He draws on a white t-shirt and plaid boxers, and though his body is primed for rest, Barba suspects his mind will keep him up well through the morning hours. He’s erred, and whatever shred of a _Once Good Catholic_ is left in him is gamely seeking punishment. His bedroom offers little to that point, so he ventures throughout his apartment, unsettled gaze routinely falling on every bit of evidence returned from his case.

While searching for his misplaced glass of scotch, Barba collects his phone, and notices it has logged several texts and two missed calls. He frowns, and starts to scroll through them. A conciliatory word from Benson, followed by her asking--not once, but twice--if he was going to join everyone for a drink?

He remembers, then, that it had been the word when the jury broke for deliberation. Win or lose, Benson had said, because she’d seen their faces, read the doubt set on brows and slackened over shoulders. Justice wasn’t modest. In their line of work, the modifier _win or lose_ seemed only to preface an occurrence of the latter. 

He doesn’t remember agreeing. With a sharpness that cuts through the alcoholic haze he’s already losing himself to, Barba lays bare his ugliest inclinations and thinks his consent is of little consequence when Benson asks something of him. She does not wait for it, but assumes its readiness. Barba knows he’s to blame for that, too; it’s not as if he’s ever proven her wrong.

There’s a hasty reply itching the tips of his fingers, but he never gets to send it. Those cries for attention manifest physically beyond his front door--a heavy, lyrical knocking that assuredly isn’t Benson. It’s almost _playful,_ and they’ve not been _that_ for a long stretch. 

Barba starts to guess at those people he barely knows, the likelier group to still have a chance for bright instances.

_What relationships haven’t I ruined, yet?_

“Stop,” he calls out, specifically at the knocking. Then, for its perpetrator, “Hold on…” 

He tugs on a pair of jeans, pulled clear out of the hamper because he has no desire to impress whoever should appear at his home uninvited. Still barefoot and pink-tinged, breath hot and mind dragging slowly over thoughts--both an product of the scotch--he returns to the door, and through the peephole spies--

Neck. 

An open throat and a loosened tie, specifically. 

He frowns, and frowns deeper still when the mystery reveals itself. 

Detective Carisi is standing outside his apartment, hands in his pockets as if to obfuscate the fact that _he’d_ been knocking. A paper take-out bag rests at his feet, and Barba recognizes the name printed on the side as from a place beside the bar at which he hadn’t deigned to make an appearance. 

“Why,” Barba says, though little about it is a question. Carisi announces himself as a presence; he’s goodness bearing a day’s worth of caloric intake, and knocking like a song. 

He’s a smile and a kind word. 

Barba’s on the offensive _immediately._

“Am I supposed to intuit what you're doing here? What is it, Lassie, did Timmy delve into the occult?”

Barba spins his voice into something crueler than his teasing should merit. It's so immediately satisfying, then, that Barba dismisses the concern that it's _transparent as glass._ Carisi, arriving with an encouraging smile and the same tired eyes as Barba,the same sensibility after what was lost--if not his good police work--is an easy target. And Barba takes aim because _he_ is hurting, too, but taking a tone with himself just doesn’t have the same effect. Barba doesn’t make a woeful face anymore; he’s coached it out of himself. Carisi’s is fresh and new.

Except, Carisi doesn't surrender so much as a sniffle. 

“I mean, he's _dabbled.”_

Deeply offended, Barba asks, “Are you _humoring_ me?”

There's snap like a whip to the line, and Carisi takes a physical step back. 

“You weren’t in a good way after that verdict came in, and then you didn’t show up for drinks, so…” Carisi shrugs, as if making his way clear across town with still-hot take-out for a man he only tangentially knows is its own answer--and beyond that, an obvious one. 

Barba folds his arms across his chest, regretting immediately that he did not scavenge for more respectable dress. The effort it takes to cover himself only leaves him feeling more bare, so he lets his naked arms rest at his sides. “Did Benson send you? I suppose she was busy.”

Carisi shrugs again, but hasn’t stopped smiling. “Nah, this was all my bright idea.” 

Then, with a nod towards Barba's homely attire, he adds, “Yours is good. Turning in?”

Barba supposes he makes for a sight, and bristles. 

“No.”

It’s a needless lie, and counterproductive, should Barba seek solitude. But he’d already torpedoed that option, having littered his home with the faces of brutalized women, those he’d recently failed and would not soon forget. 

He thinks--blithely--that if he is to harbor those failings the rest of his life, he has time enough to spare himself for one last night.

“Drink?” Barba asks, and thinks that his own voice sounds pickled from the wealth of scotch he’s already consumed. There’s a pungency that rivals even his poor attitude. He turns on his heel, leaving the door swung open and the entryway clear for Carisi to fill. 

“Now that you’re here, it’ll be social.”

“You need a qualifier to drink?” Carisi asks, wary, but takes a cautious step inside Barba’s apartment all the same. 

“It helps in the rationalization process.” 

Closing the door behind him has a strange effect. Carisi feels it like all the wind falling dead silent, dropping like a corpse at his feet. It leaves in its wake a strange calm, something Carisi imagines will denote his every step and movement, like a dusted path. Carisi even glances behind him, as if expecting to see his own footprints.

Barba plucks two new glasses from a kitchen cabinet--the one he’s lost, he supposes, is gone forever--and takes the bottle by its neck. He brandishes it gladly and pours with a familiar ease. He does this while venturing from his kitchen to his living area, steady and unbothered in that way that drunkenness makes smooth and fine. He drops onto his couch, satisfied with the journey.

Carisi sets the take-out bag on the counter and follows, though his is a far less pronounced approach. He practically slinks through the space as if he knows he ought not be there. His gaze flits around the apartment, generous at first as he smiles over the appearance and cool, calm decorating. The punches of color--acidic yellow in a particularly large painting commanding the far wall--draw the eye, but only for so long. Carisi finds cause to stare, instead, at the mess of casework Barba has left strewn about his coffee table, kitchen counter, and floor. It’s a strange sight to behold, and stranger still when Barba mirrors his interest.

He’s not drinking to forget a case gone awry. He’d purposefully skipped out on that invitation in favor of surrounding himself with what he sees, now, as his own wrongdoing. He’s plastered them over his mind and set them with alcohol, until the latter coats the affair like a fine gloss. 

“Drink,” Barba encourages. He can’t very well be alone in this. 

“Just the one,” Carisi says, and tries to find lightness in this heaving dark. “I’ve already had a few.”

“A few? You’re still behind.” 

Carisi accepts the glass and takes a seat, takes a sip. Takes in this sweepingly odd turn, where he’s sat in Barba’s apartment, when all he’d intended to do was check in on the man, and mask that effort with food. 

The scotch plants itself like a ball of fire in Carisi’s belly. His first instinct is to stare at Barba and try to suss out the proper technique. Barba looks like he’s drinking from cool glass of water for as easily as the alcohol slips past his parted lips and sparks a light in his eyes, first, before warming him. And he _looks_ warmed: pink-tinged and damp from a recent shower is half the battle, but the rest is won in bare feet and short sleeves. 

Carisi feels profoundly overdressed in his suit jacket, tie, and vest. They don’t afford him warmth like Barba has, only constriction and more lines, he’s sure, than are pleasant to stare at with a loosening mind. 

Carisi forces down another sip, drowning the implication that Barba ought to enjoy from Carisi a vision--or any at all.

There’s no noise in the apartment. Outside, the stray car horn bleats and bleeds into the dark, but nothing fully permeates the walls. Intellectually, Carisi knows it’s a sign of a well-placed life that Barba doesn’t have to hear the sounds of the City, even for living in it. But silence reminds Carisi of thin times, of lost company and frail friendships. He’d take a haunting radiator and intermittent car alarm any day. 

Carisi starts to believe the silence is only following Barba’s lead. He’s seen Barba’s antics in the courtroom, his confidence settled firmly over his convictions, kicking out his feet as he coolly paced the floor, or carried a small smile as he saw his efforts to fruition. Even his tailspins are a performance, equal in strength but dragged into ruin. 

Showmanship is near and dear to Barba, who relies on it constantly. He builds up a persona, and when it is attacked, stands well behind the facade. But Carisi suspects a truer vision of the man is what he’s known--briefly--while shadowing him for the duration of the Holden case. 

He saw a Barba that was studious and quiet. It was a shock, even, and at the time momentarily threw Carisi, who expected to be spoken down to at every turn. Instead, Barba hoarded all his problems in his own head, and worked them out silently. 

By his own admission, Barba was a poor mentor. Not the sharing type, to say the least. 

So Carisi fell in line, adopting the same thoughtful approach, even writing his ideas before presenting them. Soon enough, they’d established lines of communication. 

Carisi wonders now about how to get back to that place. 

He’s since been short with Barba, doubted his abilities, and relied on his contacts. He’s spoken of none of it, walked nary a word back, and _still,_ Barba seems likewise agreeable to willful ignorance. Carisi regrets his behavior, and supposes tonight was an attempt to answer for it. 

Barba has readily dismissed encouraging words before, but statements made with food tend to hold their ground.

Carisi sets his drink aside. He means to say something, but Barba has the same idea.

“Corrective…” Barba starts, but shakes his head; he can scarcely bring himself to finish the term.

“Yeah,” Carisi agrees, his voice drawn and quiet. He seems never to manage silence on his own, but when it’s pressed on him, Carisi quickly surrenders. 

He picks up the glass again, now understanding the drink’s caustic appeal.

“Men have a boundless propensity for evil,” Barba decides, then drains his glass, lip finally twisting slightly at the effort. Then, with a tone so buoyant Carisi can’t help but imagine the high seas and a yachting outfit so stylish, Carisi doubts his ability to picture it correctly, Barba adds: “I don’t know why I sleep with them.” 

Carisi’s surprised silence doesn’t last long.

“It’s a thinker,” he says, his voice thick with good humor. He sips idly while Barba narrows his gaze at the receding golden line in his supply. If there’s an answer for his brashness, Barba is certain he’ll find it in that elusive curve dipping greedily into the bottle. He doesn’t spare a moment to consider his words; he can’t, this night is about considering others and forgetting himself. To that end, Barba refills his glass with great purpose and need.

His behavior does not go unnoticed. 

“You should eat something,” Carisi says. “You know, on account of the drinking.” 

“I deserve a hangover,” Barba mutters against the rim of his glass. The words garble into the glass, float a moment on amber waves, and sink.

“I know it’s easy to think that way,” Carisi says, and the sentiment strikes him as all too familiar. He’s given this spiel to other officers in times of need, and that Barba should join their ranks does not surprise him as much as he expected. When given impossibly high responsibilities, people forget their limitations. When met with them again, people falter. 

“A lotta people did wrong by those girls, but you’re not one of ‘em. You did all you could. We saw it and the girls saw it. S’just the jury that wouldn’t see it.” 

Barba shakes his head in slow, steady contemplation. “That is precisely my job: to make the jury see reason. And I failed. _Spectacularly.”_

He kicks out a foot and--purposefully or not--it collides with a stack of files abandoned on his floor. They spill forward, a glossy depository of his shortcomings. He cocks his head, and though focus seems beyond him now, he stares. 

His expression is tight, even when unmet. It is as though he still hasn’t given up the fight, despite being expelled from the ring. He’s still hungry for a brawl, and will bloody himself up if that’s as close as he can get.

Carisi decides he can’t witness Barba in this state. It’s too personal. Well beyond the bare arms spilling smoothly from an undershirt, this is intimate, and worse--it’s heartbreaking. A man in ruins should not be gawked at. 

He decides, instead, to make good on his own suggestion. Barba should eat.

“The second victim, Tabitha Duran. She works at a Starbucks in Midtown. I don’t know _which one,_ so now I won’t go to any of them.” 

From the kitchen, where Carisi has set upon the take-out bag and plated the meal he got for Barba--Italian comfort food, seemingly both inoffensive and luxurious--he interjects, “Nah, I just spoke to Tabby. She’s moving back home to live with her folks. Connecticut.”

“Well there’s _that_ problem solved.”

“Now you just can’t go to Connecticut.” 

Carisi says this much with a wry, barely-there smile suitable for his barely-there joke. He can’t find anything lesser than the gorgeous patterned dinnerware and sterling silver utensils in Barba’s kitchen cabinets. They are all pristine, _of the same set,_ and do not appear to experience much regular wear.

He returns to the living area with the meal and a fistful of paper towels. It won’t be his mess if one is made, but circumstance dictates otherwise: you don’t hand a drunk man something slathered in red sauce and expect him to mind the furniture. 

Barba is surprised--charmed? Surprisingly charmed--by the line. And the food is the closer. 

He makes a face when Carisi slides it ahead of him on the coffee table: an exaggerated frown denoting some due respect. It’s a beautiful piece of chicken, stewed in flavor, over a mound of pasta worthy of a Hemingway-esque hangover. In truth, Barba wasn’t of a mind to partake in whatever Carisi thought to bring him, thought he _needed,_ along with empty words of encouragement thrown after a thing already lost.

He _wasn’t,_ but then it was placed in front of him, and Barba found his attention drawn to the dish and easily held. 

(Barba hopes he’d have found equal fascination with whatever he drew out of his fridge at two in the morning to sop up the unholy cocktail in his belly, but he doubts it.)

He eats, and thanks to the scotch is none too self-conscious about eating alone while met with company. 

Carisi sees cause to occupy his mouth all the same. He runs it, directionless at first, until his story finds an artery, and sets itself in the vein of Barba’s ugly little plan to avoid familiar faces.

“I once went to a party--a buddy of mine from the Academy, it was his birthday--and I ran into someone, a girl, and she was looking at me funny all night. And I looked back, thinking maybe she was flirtin’ or something.” 

Carisi shrugs--overlarge, or maybe Barba only thinks its that way, now that he’s surrendered his straight-backed performance, and angled more towards his meal. There’s just kick enough in the sauce to challenge the burn of the scotch, and they meet in Barba’s gut like an age-old feud. He eats and drinks like he means for them to battle to the death. 

“And we did this… for maybe an hour. Her looking at me, and me trying to figure out why. It got ridiculous. I went up to her, and--” Carisi shakes his head, then falls eerily mute, like the memory astounds him even now. 

He doesn’t finish for a time, and Barba doesn’t press him. The truth is wrangled out of him by his own conscience, which seems to have set itself in Carisi’s hands, for as much as he twists and gestures with them. 

“Turns out--” Carisi’s hands lay flat on his knees, like he means to silence them. “--I’d told her her mother had been killed. This was back when I was working Homicide. Eight months before, I’d gone to her home, and given her the worst news she could ever hear, and sat with her, _prayed with her,_ and then _I forgot._ ” 

Mouth full of pasta, Barba asks, “So, what, you don’t celebrate birthdays now?” 

It is so truly a tasteless, awful response that Carisi is spurned to laughter. 

Barba feels nothing like ghastly terror at Carisi’s absent-mindedness, and whether that’s his own feeling or the scotch forging a looping, happy path through his thoughts, Carisi is glad for it. He is genuinely relieved for sharing this secret and feeling something besides guilt for it, so when his laughter dies it’s replaced by a shy, honest smile. The only hint of shame resigns itself to the tips of Carisi’s ears.

“I’ve never--in my life--felt worse.” This admission is partner to the first, and Carisi wants both understood. “Awful. I’m an awful person.”

“Oh, certainly,” Barba snits, and gestures first to the meal, then gestures _with_ the meal towards Carisi himself. It’s a kind of compliment, though Barba doesn’t make it explicitly. “The evidence is _overwhelming._ ”

Carisi huffs, then reluctantly smiles at the joke. Unexpectedly, Barba smiles back.

His gaze is warm, and there’s a smudge of red on his lip from the pasta sauce. Carisi shifts in his seat, for the first time aware that he should be uncomfortable, but isn’t. He quite likes the position he’s put himself in, seeing Barba in an unspun state. The cause is unfortunate, but the vision is undeniably fascinating. More exciting, still, is that Barba doesn’t seem to mind.

“It’s hard to be a part of people’s lives like this. All you ever want to do is help. All you ever know is pity and anger.” 

Barba rolls his eyes, though he bears no animosity towards the statement. He knows Carisi is making a lot of sense-- _that’s_ what concerns him.

“All hail the philosopher-king,” he says, and goes for another gulp of scotch.

Carisi seems hesitant to ask, but it’s curiosity that’s kept him here so far, so he goes for it: “Is it any different? As a lawyer?”

Carisi is a man with a history of jumping from posting to posting, always in search of what will make him happiest, most content. Barba doesn’t know quite how that feels. Feeling ill-at-ease in a workplace was always the norm, until he grew accomplished and took the positions once belonging to those who had once made life difficult for him. 

“I haven’t got anything to compare it to,” he admits.

But, in a moment of clarity, a story does find him. 

It’s just not his own. 

“Four of my uncles, back in Cuba? Were teachers, engineers. When they immigrated, sought work here, they became janitors.” A grimace touches Barba’s lips, and defeat sinks his shoulders. 

“I feel like I’ve kept up the tradition,” he says. “Even when you win, it all feels too late. The damage is done. You can tell yourself you’ve cleared a path for others, but that presupposes danger and carelessness. And your world narrows to seeing only that.”

It is obviously not the answer Carisi had hoped for. 

“Oh.”

“But don’t take my word for it,” Barba says, throwing his tone towards jovial but landing it short. “Or do. Go, be a lawyer. See for yourself. You impressed LaRossa during your interview.”

Carisi perks up, asks brightly, “She said she was impressed?” 

Barba set the whole thing up, so Carisi shouldn’t be surprised he knows the Brooklyn ADA’s thoughts. All the same, some positive affirmation goes a long way, especially when it’s not just coming from his mother, who is suddenly thrilled with the prospect of having a lawyer in the family.

It’s Barba’s turn to shrug and smile.

“We gab.”

“I’d prod you for details, but you’re totally wasted,” Carisi says, and ducks his head. This kind of brashness from just a few sips of scotch doesn’t inspire confidence in Carisi’s hopes to retain his composure. He can’t imagine how Barba is managing.

He tidies up after himself, adding, “So, maybe another time.” 

“Prodding me for details when I’m wasted is the _best time,_ ” Barba says, then purses his lips after another sip of scotch. “For prodding.” 

If it’s a dirty joke--and _goddamnit,_ Carisi thinks it is--he’s never heard one delivered in more muted tones. 

Barba is all but _somber,_ now, having drank more than he should, and used his pride to betray himself. Carisi feels at fault for the dampened mood, because even if Barba had plans to hammer himself with guilt all evening, he did not envision an audience. 

Barba is silenced by his drinking, his guilt, his dress. He scrubs at his face and drinks some more. Carisi decides to announce his departure. 

Talking quietly, he says simple things like “Just gonna clear these plates” and “Be on my way.” 

“Don’t you dare pour that down the sink,” Barba says, fast as a shot once he realizes Carisi has cleared away his own glass of scotch, which was still half-full. “Drink it or give it to me.”

Carisi dutifully brings back the glass, and Barba throws back the mouthful. In a blatant sleight-of-hand, Carisi makes to return the bottle of scotch to the kitchen, but Barba catches his arm. 

His fingers are long, warm, his grip tight. There’s confidence in the gesture Carisi doesn’t dare question. 

“Leave it,” he says, and trades Carisi’s empty glass for the bottle. 

“Forget hungover, you may just drink yourself into a coma, Counselor.”

A poor choice of words on Carisi’s part, and Barba doesn’t let him forget it. 

“Oh, but there’ll be company on the ward.”

With the great, sweeping reach of his arm, he bends and collect the file on Kelly Palacio, who is still in a medically-induced coma at Mount Sinai Hospital. 

The file is overstuffed with medical reports and doctor’s notes, affidavits from the friends she was with before being discovered in her apartment building’s stairwell some five hours later. There are photos of her injuries taken with exacting precision, and then--for the jury--there is a photo of her from a recent camping trip to Maine’s Mt. Katahdin. 

She’s smiling, sweaty-browed but her head raised with distinction all the same, given the climb she’d mastered. Now, she can’t even breath on her own.

It’s too hubristic a notion that Barba should be able to spare anyone pain, but justice? That’s all he knows.

“What am I good for, if I can’t do this?” 

He says this quietly. Mournfully. He enters the drunken spell of meditation, where one turns upside down inside himself, and finds only those heaviest thoughts, and believes them all to be true.

Hearing him, Carisi sits. He can leave Barba alone with that thought in his head.

“You’re going up against what people want to believe. What’s simple.” 

_“This_ is simple,” Barba insists, and brandishes the latest word on Kelly’s chances of regaining consciousness and making a full recovery. They’re hopeful, but words alone are a meager substitute for their deliverance. 

For as vehemently as Carisi agrees, he sees the good in reasoning with Barba, rather than commiserating their loss. 

“The jury… they thought maybe those girls deserved it. Wanted it. One of our own victims said she thought that much, herself.”

Carisi wishes he’d gone the commiseration route, even if sulking only spelled trouble for a man sitting well within reach of a bottle. The statement he’s made--though true, and arrived at through observation and reason--is damning. He chalks it up to the fact that there’s still a streak of green in him, because when has an obfuscation ever been more dismal than the truth it’s meant to hide? 

The truth wins out, he’s found. It’s every extreme: harsher than a lie, softer than kindness. Carisi still fumbles with it, and in this instance loses his place altogether. 

Barba, too, becomes unhinged. He excuses himself from the present and delves back into time, back where he assumes he can first attribute blame.

“In law school, someone told me sex crimes were the hardest cases to prosecute, and being the piece-of-shit twenty-something I was, I thought, _I’ll do that, too. Easy. No problem._ ” Barba doesn’t make a show of being ashamed of himself. That’s already deeply set, forged like stone under his skin. All he can do now is allow a new line to wrinkle his brow, and with it, question everything he’s ever thought of himself, or known, or hoped to be true. Uselessly--because he poses this question to someone who thinks so highly of him--Barba asks, “What is _wrong with me.”_

He puts down the glass of scotch, finally, only to fill his hands with the weight of his head. He bends forward so that his elbows are set on his knees, and he is positioned so as to drop himself, should he choose. If he thinks he could fall any further than the floor, he would.

Carisi realizes he’s never seen Barba cover his face. If the man feels anger or disdain or embarrassment, he wears those feelings plainly, and sometimes to his detriment. It's how he's rightfully earned himself a bit of a reputation as a peacock in court--it's not all due to his designer plumage and coloring.

“I transferred from Homicide because I thought having a living victim would make it easier,” Carisi blurts out. It’s an admission, he thinks, in the same vein as Barba’s. They’d both thought of themselves in the place of others’ genuine pain.

He follows up weakly, “It doesn’t.” 

“Well aren’t we a pair,” Barba mutters, face still set in his hands. 

He drags his fingers through his hair, which has dried some and taken on a buoyant shape. It crests up, over his brow in a soft wave. Gray hairs pepper themselves the dark collective, and Carisi doesn’t doubt Barba views them as a disruption. They’ve found him all at once, like an ambush, and they congregate at his temples, as though his foremost thoughts and concerns are the most fertile grounds.

From there, they spread like weeds. 

He only releases his hair to make for his glass. The scotch is a welcome distraction.

Barba takes a long walk off a short ledge with his drinking; all at once, it catches up to him, and he cascades into drunk. He does this with a start, a laugh. It ripples through his limbs and renders him unsteady. 

“How long were you in Homicide?” 

Carisi’s surprised by the question. 

“Two years, give or take.”

“So, what, it just didn’t dawn on you?” Barba asks with a sneer. “These women are dead, you felt you’d inherently failed them, why not go somewhere else where you could play the odds?”

Carisi shifts in his seat, uncomfortable. He’s coming up against a tone he thought Barba had long-since retired for him. It’s undeniably abrasive, and stripped bare of any sardonic wit to save it from being outright mean-spirited. The alcohol, Carisi expects, burned any goodwill clean off the bone.

“That’s not it. Not exactly.”

“Well, which is it--the fault of your sensibilities or your sensitivities?” 

Barba delights in this--being cruel. He knows just the thing to say, every time. It’s a wonder he didn’t become a defense attorney, accepting only top dollar to degrade people in favor of his wealthy clients’ interests. 

He knows why: he has the silver tongue for it, not the heart. 

“I don’t--I don’t know. Whichever made sense enough to quit my job and bounce between four boroughs, I guess.” 

Barba doesn’t have a cutting word to say about that. But because he is curious, he asks, “Would you quit again?”

“I’ve about run out of boroughs,” Carisi admits. “The Bronx, maybe?”

“My neck of the woods,” Barba says, soothed by its inclusion. He can’t help but smile after mention of his home, which is a strange thing, given how adamantly he’s lived his life so as to never face it again. 

Carisi smiles, and unknowingly, their thoughts run together. Carisi’s chase after Barba’s and scrape at their heels. 

“You say that like it should read on my gravestone,” Carisi cracks. _“Here Lies Sonny Carisi. He Visited Barba’s Neck of the Woods.”_

Barba smiles, then chuckles at that, pleased. He’s drunk. Drunk and _then some._ The fact that there’s brute force enough in his old neighborhood to kill a man is somehow comforting. Barba doesn’t feel so alone for being wounded by his own departure. 

Fast and fatal as a knife to the heart, Barba’s longing for home crosses wires with the resentment he still carries for the place. This is a common enough occurrence for Barba, who doesn’t know a single living soul who lets his past lay finished. 

Which isn’t to say he won’t stir the pot himself. Barba still catches himself fanning old flames, and letting himself get burned. 

He sinks his head against the corner where the length of his couch juts left to create a tidy L-shape. There’s space enough for him to curl or flatten out, and he chooses the former.

It is the shape a child renders when drawn to his mother, and Carisi cannot help but stare. Barba’s back is presented to danger, his belly and insides protected. Except, there is no mother. Barba isn’t audience to a story or a song, or anything nearly as sweet. Only the sour aftertaste of scotch, and the non-smell of the wiry fabric of his couch. 

And Carisi’s voice, should he choose to say anything. 

For a time, he doesn’t. He allows Barba to hide himself in plain sight, and thinks if he falls asleep right now, it will be the best possible outcome. 

Carisi watches the soft swell of his back, but never catches on to steady breathing. 

“You alright there, Counselor?”

“So great,” Barba says, and hugs a throw pillow to his middle.

Carisi leaves the couch with the emptied glass of scotch, and returns with a full glass of water. In just those few short moments, Barba’s uncurled himself and is laying flat on his back along the whole of the couch. He’s got his phone in one hand and the bottle of scotch pinned between his side and the couch. Slowly, he thumbs a text.

“You should go,” Barba tells him.

“Oh? Okay.” Carisi sets the water down on a nearby coaster, if only because Barba watches him do it. 

“I texted somebody.” Barba says while brandishing his phone and the bottle of scotch. Of the latter, he insists, “He’ll pull his weight.”

“Oh. Yeah, I… should get out of your way, then.”

“Want to help me take the edge off?” 

The question breaches the space between them before Barba does, though he’s up and off the couch faster and with far more grace than Carisi expects of him. 

He stands straight-backed, hands smoothing over the wrinkles set in his undershirt. He smiles, because the notion enters his mind and is altogether pleasant. Sweet and vague, he thinks of Carisi’s lovemaking. Affirmative. Nothing too wild, because he’s still that side of _more Catholic_ than _not._ This is a young man who is hungry for praise and brimming with the kind of ambition to see that that praise is _earned._ He’s just the sort to hear an offer and think it a challenge.

Barba’s ideas are not so complimentary, only easily grasped. They are nearest to what he wants in this moment, and Carisi is nearer still.

Nearer, and wide-eyed, and pink. 

“No… thank you.” 

Barba smiles kindly, as if the thought was enough and he’d never have carried through with it, anyway. Still, he closes the space between them and pats Carisi’s face. His palm is warm where it rests--twice, in slow succession--on the ever-warming flat of Carisi’s cheek. One might think he’d slapped him, for as red as the parting gesture left the younger man. 

Barba then braces Carisi’s shoulders with his hands in a way that might have entered his mind as a hug, though he does not execute it fully.

“No,” he agrees, and Carisi can tell he’s struggling to make sense out of the buzzing of his lips and tongue. He can’t pass words through them, so he repeats, “No, no, no.”

Barba turns, heads towards his bedroom. The hand is the last to go, and trails behind him like the invitation still stands. 

Carisi quickly checks for his keys, wallet, and phone. He means to make a swift retreat. 

He’s at the front door when a quick glance at his phone reveals Barba has mistakenly texted _him._ Carisi actually restarts his phone, as if doing so will correct this unmanageable mistake. 

Only, Carisi finds the request just as it had been. Simple, perfunctory. A touch risqué. 

_[come fuck me. Scotch also]_

Carisi reads it a half a dozen times and finds himself stalled and uncertain. 

He can hear Barba moving around in the bedroom. Carisi notices he’s left his glass of water behind--untouched--so he gathers it and waits at the door. 

“Hey, Barba?”

Carisi doesn’t hear an answer, so he placates what he suspects is drunken silence by filling it with words, hoping some of them gleam on and find a home in Barba’s mind. 

“You know, it’s late. Maybe forget that guy. He probably can’t come over. Traffic, you know? Go to sleep, huh? Hey, here’s your water, just at the door, here--” 

Barba answers the door. He’s abandoned his shirt, and takes up in its stead a curious expression. It’s as if he’s forgotten why Carisi is here. His eyes are furrowed, almost studious, but whatever the mind behind them reaches for, it comes up short. 

He takes the water from Carisi--it seems the thing to do--and drinks the whole of it, then returns the glass to Carisi’s raised hand. It’s all he can reason out.

Carisi smiles at the obvious effort. 

Barba smiles back, another imitation. 

“Goodnight, Counselor,” he says, and Barba nods right along with him. The bedroom door closes. 

Carisi tidies up the files Barba has spread about the apartment, reasoning that the man is in for a rude awakening enough as it is. He puts what remains of the meal in the fridge, wrapped tight in plastic. He rinses the glasses in the sink, and sits the dwindling supply of scotch on the kitchen counter. Barba will see it when he wakes, and that will be answer enough for his splitting headache.

Remembering that he’d arrived with the sole purpose of seeing that Barba was alright, Carisi knows he’s leaving without being so sure. 

-

Morning arrives slowly, and Barba denies it an additionally few hours by sheer force of will. 

He believes his bed is all that is keeping him off the floor. Behind his eyes, Barba can feel a wall of bricks. When he blinks, it’s like running headlong into stone. 

Barba’s movements are rigid and slow as he abandons his bedroom for the bathroom, hugging the wall as he makes his way. If he falls, he thinks he’ll dent the wood floors, if not break through them entirely.

While taking a long, much-needed piss, he spies the previous evening’s missing glass of scotch resting on the back of the toilet tank. He drains it--a little hair of the dog--then fills it with water at the sink, and drinks a few more down. 

He can’t figure out if he smells like sweat, or if all the scotch has somehow done damage to his olfactory nerves. He showers out of habit, if not necessity. It hardly seems to matter.

Barba finds his cell phone on the couch, it’s battery drained. He charges it and makes coffee. 

These are the necessities he places well ahead of his own thoughts. It may be the kindest thing he’s ever done for himself, because for twenty whole minutes, he hasn’t a clue as to the depths to which he should feel foolish, mortified, and penitent. 

_[Apologies are in order.]_  
_[See above]_  
_[Coffee?]_  


-

Barba enters the cafe with a paper coffee cup bearing the logo of _another_ cafe in hand. He drinks from it even as he stands in line, and orders another cup. 

“Decaf?” the barista guesses. 

The kid swallows his words as if Barba’s silence is hard enough to knock a tooth back into his throat. Carisi, who’s sat at a corner table, gleefully watches the exchange. 

Barba is wearing last night’s jeans, but has coupled them with a far more respectable shirt and a casual puffy jacket to account for the chill. Although the early fall has blessed them with grey skies, he enters the cafe wearing sunglasses. Those, placed between a grim little line of a mouth and a set principle in his brow to suggest squinting, have him looking appropriately hungover. The gray stubble along his jaw and above his lip help carry the whole look gracefully towards purposeful dignity. 

It’s one hell of an illusion.

With his two coffees in hand, Barba joins Carisi. 

Carisi’s own casual attire is substantially more so, defined not by an effort towards supposed ease-- _like Barba’s_ \--but _only_ ease, which he arrives at naturally. This is particularly evident in his inherently ugly mustard-colored button down, rendered in a well-worn, heavy cotton. Style is forgone for comfort, and to that point, Barba can barely stand to look at him without his sunglasses dulling the view. 

But for propriety’s sake, they have to go.

Barba’s eyes aren’t bloodshot. He is spared that. 

Something in his constitution focuses all the awful effects of a hangover deep inside his skull. He’ll suffer the consequences, but not look a fool for doing so.

They are together--Carisi, bright-eyed and diligent with his laptop, and Barba, dimmed under the distilled surface of his blatant hangover--the full sweep of human existence, fit neatly at one small corner table. Barba finishes off his first coffee (though Carisi guesses it’s likelier still only a _previous_ coffee), and immediately takes a sip from his fresh cup. Carisi can practically see it drum through Barba’s brow, unfurl the lines there, and open his whole self to view. 

He looks ashamed, but not for long. 

“What are you doing now, writing a novel? Oh, God, or a _screenplay?_ ” 

It’s not quite the greeting Carisi expects after the farewell he got the night before. 

“Funny,” Carisi says, but corrects: “No, a buddy of mine is in his final year at Fordham--I’m reading over one of his papers for him.”

“The blind leading the blind,” Barba mutters. He knows he should let it go, but considering all the obstacles Barba has thrown ahead of his own path, this is one he can easily address. “Let me see,” he says, and Carisi complies by turning his laptop around to face Barba. 

Barba glares at the screen, then starts typing furiously. 

Content to just watch, Carisi sips his own coffee. He can take a wild guess as to why Barba called this meeting, but he isn’t going to push for an apology Carisi doesn’t necessarily think he is due. Above all, he is curious.

So he doesn't speak when Barba tears into his friend’s paper, undoubtedly giving sharp commentary and deleting entire paragraphs of work. Barba gives himself to the distraction, and looks more settled for it. It's a kinder thing that Carisi himself has been able to offer. 

(All the same, he makes a mental note to follow-up with an immediate explanation for his friend, left he stake Barba's _commentary_ for Carisi's _criticism.)_

Barba saves his work, then closes Carisi's laptop. 

“There, now we can talk.” He hates--immediately--that he's given himself the stage in this way, but presses on. With one hand curled around his coffee and the other laid opened, palm-down on the table as though there was an invisible Bible on which he was swearing his testimony, Barba says, “I want to apologize for my behavior last night. It was inexcusable.” 

“You were drunk,” Carisi dismisses, and finds he can still smile about it, though he doubts Barba would appreciate that.

True to form, Barba persists: “The point still stands.”

Again, Carisi brushes off Barba’s feelings of failure, thinking he can maybe do today what he’d tried last night. “It was a long case and a tough loss. And, hey. It’s not like you went somewhere to publicly make an ass of yourself. You went home.”

“Foresight is key,” Barba mutters humorlessly. 

“And who hasn’t had a shitty night doing this job?” Carisi shrugs, smiles, and even throws a dimple into the mix. “So, don’t worry about it.” 

It’s all very tempting.

Still, Barba sets his feet and steels his spine. That he might be forgiven is revelatory, and a thing that--when first touched--blots out all else. He wants that for a lot of reasons, but cannot gift it to himself unearned. 

Carisi is sweet, not stupid; this is him playing at the latter. 

“Carisi,” Barba starts, and almost loses the name in the sigh that precedes it. “I alluded to things I’d rather not be made public.”

Carisi’s smile falters, but only for a moment. He throws it back on again, secures it like buttons on a coat. 

“‘Course. Sure. I figured.” 

What Barba is referring to is still up in the air, though Carisi chooses to assume the entire evening is game. Truthfully, Carisi thinks Barba’s enemies would find redder meat in the knowledge that Barba can be made to feel doubt and self pity. That he drinks too much and sleeps with men is gristle--there’s not much there than what’s on the surface. 

Barba continues, because that is not the point he means to make. 

“At the same time, I realize if you choose to lodge a complaint, you would need to cite specifics.”

He realizes after the fact that he’s assuming Carisi would first comply with a gag order. Given the look of confusion stricken across Carisi’s face--thrown and held like the sharp of a slap--it is a safe assumption. 

“A complaint?” Carisi asks, then pointedly lowers his tone and continues uneasily, “Come on. No. I’m not doing that.” 

Barba feels his embarrassment surging to counter the dull aches and pains of his hangover; he’s going to have to _explain_ why Carisi should consider taking action. 

“I sent you a sexually suggestive text and touched you inappropriately. You would be well without your rights to say something.” 

The words--and his having to say them--are disturbing. Barba has to pitch his gaze just left and north of Carisi’s hunched shoulders. He can’t look a man in the eye and see realization dawn like light through an opened window. A dismissal of the night, Barba knows, is likely. Expected, even. A denial--less so.

Barba feels answerable for everything from the text to the odd embrace to inviting Carisi inside for a drink.

“You’re serious,” Carisi says, and is no longer smiling. He looks taken aback, and follows through with his posture, sinking heavily against the seat of his chair. 

“Wow,” he says, indulging in his surprise just a moment longer, and then jumping wholeheartedly towards an outright refusal of Barba’s take. “I’m not--I don’t feel that way about it. At all. So--pump the breaks, there, huh?”

Carisi’s response is not eloquent, but true to form, it is genuine. Silently, Barba nods.

Carisi takes a sip of coffee. Barba does the same. Quiet finds them like the creeping advance of winter. It starts at their extremities. Barba drums his fingers, Carisi drags the heel of his sneaker across the tiled floor. 

“I’m usually--” Barba stops, reconsiders approaching this particular target. Parting his lips is yet another admission he had no intention of making, but nonetheless feels is required of him. “I don’t make that mistake.”

“You--uh, didn’t.” In a rush of heat to his face, Carisi realizes he agrees: he wishes Barba _hadn’t_ done what he’d done, if only because Carisi himself feels complicit in its happening.

“If you’re weirded out ‘cause maybe you thought you were responding to… something… Maybe you were.”

Barba narrows his eyes. 

His only response is a definitive, _“Huh.”_

Carisi is upended by his own admission. He thumbs at the plastic lid of his coffee cup before setting it aside, denying the distraction it represents. 

“We’re a lot alike. Uh, no offense.”

Barba cuts to the chase: “You talk about ex-girlfriends _all the time.”_

“Yeah, well, all that proves is I’m a liar.” Carisi bites his tongue. Being too sharp with himself will give too much away--he knows this. Sitting before Barba, he feels as though he’s kicked himself free of the earth, and Barba can see how little Carisi has to tether him to his little island. It’s a terrifying angle to be seen from, and the likes of Barba’s scrutinizing gaze can be seen from space.

“I mean, I’m also not--you know. No. No _way._ ”

Barba takes that in--whatever _that_ is--and nods along. Far be it from him to issue demand after the pass he’s been given. 

Still--it’s impossible to let Carisi’s blithering go on. Barba mercily staunches the flow by pointing to himself and proclaiming, “Way.”

Carisi laughs at that--uneasily, at first, but the smile he ends on is genuine. 

He asks, red-faced, “Can we call it a wash?”

Barba brings his coffee cup to meet Carisi’s. “Gladly.”

Carisi nods and averts his gaze. “Cool.”

And while Barba feels lighter for the revelation, and less like he should shoulder blame for a blameless act, he frowns, then muses aloud, “I still feel kind of pathetic.”

Always eager to brainstorm, Carisi offers, “You drank, like, half a bottle of scotch.” 

Truthfully, Carisi’s surprised Barba is _upright._

“Hm,” Barba replies, much in the airy tone of, _No, that’s not it._

“If it makes you feel any better, I’ve totally written a screenplay.”

“Oh, please. Don’t placate me with lies. You’ve written no less than three.”

Carisi is poised to respond-- _two and a half, at best. I’m stuck._ \--the passing stench of a customer’s order of eggs sends Barba into a tailspin. He must look peaky and green for it, because Carisi is quick to reach a hand across the short distances of the table and lay it steadily on Barba’s shoulder. 

He asks, “You alright there, Counselor?” 

Barba smiles--albeit, grimly--and waves off Carisi’s concern. He’s highly adept at hangovers, less so with eggs. He draws on his sunglasses again, as if darkness can cloak all his senses and triumph over the elements. 

“You ask me that an awful lot,” he says, and draws in a helping of air through his nose. “A less assured man might begin to doubt his firmity.” 

“Nah, you’re plenty firm,” Carisi says, then remembers himself and removes his hand. He shrinks back, embarrassed for speaking so plainly. 

Barba smiles, satisfied, as if he’d planned that. 

“Well look at us. We about broke even.”

“Um,” Carisi starts, thinking _Thank God,_ maybe that’s his out, and they can both step away unscathed. But the impulse--as soon as he recognizes it--overtakes him. 

He’s ambitious. Barba _knows_ this.

“You wouldn’t want to, I dunno. Get dinner sometime?”

For Barba, the invitation is a sobering one. Carisi’s already done that, and Barba harangued him with drunken insults and touching. It seems a fool’s errand to try again. 

He removes his sunglasses, folds them neatly, and lays them on the table. It’s a stalling tactic. 

“Please don’t mistake me for glib, but,” Barba gives a little shake of his head; it’s a silly thing--at his age--to explain away. “I don’t date anymore. What I texted you? That’s what I do.”

Carisi looks uncomfortable with that answer. He’s drawn in on himself, shoulders leading limbs. First, Barba thinks he didn’t want that particular insight, but it dawns on him that Carisi is regarding him with something more akin to pity. 

A simple _yes_ or _no_ would have been understood. A refusal on the basis of the question itself seems unfinished. 

“Why,” is all he asks.

“It’s convenient,” Barba says, but adds frankly: “I like it.” 

Carisi relaxes some. “Not a romantic, are you?”

“Not by a long shot,” Barba agrees. He takes another sip of coffee, and this time savors the full depth of its flavor. “When I was younger, maybe. I think at some point, people decide to chance chasing a spark, or stop wasting their time.” 

It’s advice, Barba realizes, freely given since Carisi seems to ask after it so often. Admittedly, he doesn’t much appreciate this sampling. 

“Sounds terrible.”

Barba smirks at that. “I don’t think you’d like it, no. But it works for me.”

Carisi must look uncertain--the picture of doubt in mustard yellow--because Barba then feels the need to bolster his case.

“It takes a lot of yourself to do this work. I don’t particularly like what’s leftover. I don’t want to give that to anyone. It’s meager.” Barba surprises himself with his honesty. In the same breath, he regrets this morning’s swallow of scotch. 

He rolls his eyes and takes another gulp of coffee, hopefully to awaken his own sense of self-preservation. 

“Christ. I’m still drunk.” 

“Well, sober up,” Carisi says brightly, then steels himself for yet another blow to his pride, should he persist. 

Thing is, he thinks he sees a spark.

“...And consider it, maybe?”

Barba raises his eyebrows, but on the whole he doesn’t look surprised. 

“You live in a fun little world, don’t you?”

Carisi blushes, shrugs. He wants to see that his shot is taken.

“You really want to try me?”

“I could be up for it,” Carisi says, fashioning a smirk of his own to match Barba’s. “I’ve been told I’m impressive.”

“The inane ramblings of a drunk old man,” Barba dismisses. 

“He seemed lucid enough.”

Carisi’s flirtations are sharp, if sometimes fumbled. The lines are quick-witted, and for as fast as they part his pink lips, Barba is surprised not to see bruising. 

It’s as though he can’t be trusted with his own arsenal. 

Barba supposes he could get a grip on it. 

But that kind of bravado is not natural to him, and he thinks immediately that he’s still running on fumes from the night before. He excuses himself of the overreach, and shakes his head.

“You’re kind, but no. Save your thoughtful take-out dinners for someone else.”

“Come on--”

“Carisi.”

There is--a _tone._

The limb Carisi has gone out on snaps clean off, and he hurtles towards the hard ground. He lands softly atop his expectations, saying only, “Oh.”

Then, like he means to stand up and brush himself off, he chances a smile strong enough to suggest he understands, and the effort was his own, and he’s glad for trying. 

Barba might have been embarrassed for the display, but reminds himself that he drank scotch while taking a piss _that morning._ He has shame enough for them both. 

“Ah. You were letting me down easy, there.”

“Sorry,” Barba says, feeling awkward and unbalanced--perhaps even more so than Carisi, who’s had his hopes upended. “If it wasn’t that. _Easy._ I’m out of practice.”

He occupies himself with his coffee, then his phone, and pretends there’s anymore to his life than his hangover, right now. The cloud cover has broken some and there’s light enough to aggravate Barba through the window. He knows he should have taken his leave then, but he’s oddly comfortable. The cafe is quiet, people’s voices only soft stirrings of life. It’s much simpler in here, Barba thinks, than navigating the world outside. 

All he has to contend with is this small section of table, glossy and abbreviated by the space given up to coffee cups and sunglasses and Carisi’s laptop. It’s _deceptively_ simple, he corrects of himself, because there is one mounting concern: _Carisi,_ and the expanding opinion he holds over Barba, particularly now that his vision of the man has met new lows.

And not to put too fine a point on it, Carisi asks: “So last night was normal for you, huh?”

Barba doesn’t want to guess whether Carisi means the drinking and upset, or the text. For the detective’s own sake, he presupposes tact and answers towards the former. 

“They don’t teach you stress-management at Fordham?” Barba’s little grin is twisting and insincere. “Yeah, Harvard neither.” 

“They did, actually. It was a one-off seminar.” Carisi actually recalls learning a great deal that sunny Saturday afternoon. “Can I make a suggestion?”

Barba’s eyebrows set themselves low, practically obstructing his line of sight. 

“Where can this _possibly_ be going,” he mutters. Carisi ignores him, and though Barba readies his defenses for any number of overly-chummy propositions, the response is quiet, concerned, and above all--unexpected.

“Maybe think about whether this was stress-related or something else.”

“Oh, left field, then.” 

Carisi says nothing, doesn’t push his argument. Likewise, Barba doesn’t shame his attempt to suddenly be mindful of his words; he doesn’t demand that Carisi say what it is he’s insinuating, because Barba knows those terms will find his own mouth, first. An alcoholic, prone to bouts of depression, the list goes on--what if he chokes on one of his less illustrious attributes, falters, and shows his hand? 

Carisi’s phone chimes with the arrival of a text. Two more quickly follow.

“Wasn’t me this time,” Barba mutters, breaking the tension. The grin Carisi flashes him isn’t met head-on, but acknowledged only from a sloping angle. 

“It’s Rollins,” Carisi tells him. “Kelly Palacio came out of her coma. She’s doing okay.”

“Good,” Barba says, and finds that in coming into such great relief, he is stricken with silence. The quiet soothes his ego and feeds the dusty crevice where his confidence used to bloom. He doesn’t have a word--cruel or otherwise--for himself. This development is its own goodness; Barba only basks in it.

The agreed-upon silence does not pass him for some time, until Barba sorts his belongings and settles into his decision to depart from Carisi’s company. 

He says, “I’ll contact her parents, arrange to speak with her when she’s ready. Explain some things.”

“You want help with that?”

“Doing my job?” Barba asks dully, like the work itself is entirely monotonous, and does not merit the explicit turns he experienced--and Carisi _witnessed_ \--last night. He means to cover his tracks so that his pride might not be followed, hunted, and caught. 

He offers a crooked smile, and in its place takes precious time. 

“No,” he decides. Another refusal for Carisi, but a fine affirmation for Barba. “I’ll give it another shot.”

“It’s not just _your_ job, Counselor. We all want to help.” This much is said kindly, and tweaked by a smile. Carisi’s earnestness does him one better when he adds, “That doesn’t have to embarrass you.”

“Funny thing is, you don’t get to choose that for me.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes people don’t make good choices for themselves.” 

“ _No,_ ” Barba agrees, the word forming over his tongue like ice on steel. “Particularly _mouthy_ people. They make all kinds of calamitous choices.”

Carisi holds up his hands in surrender. Barba knows Carisi means well, and knows, too, that he’s made the right choice. 

Last night’s curiosity has left him, and he’s awoken from that ridiculous dream to witness the morning’s truth: he can’t be with someone who understands him. There’s not enough room for error, and Barba makes a wealth of those. 

What ultimately stays his heart is that he’s never been content with kindness. There’s nothing in it for him, nothing that bends him to that level. He’ll break, first, then take his ruined pride and go. Standing straight and only kneeling for what he wants, when he wants it--it’s hardly fine art, but Barba finds that elsewhere. Bodies are as crass as his insults, and both can take the other.

But kindness? Barba knows so little of how to return it. 

He tries his hand at the game, anyway. 

“Thank you for your concern,” Barba says, and hopes it sounds enough like he genuinely means it. He follows it up with an addendum that cannot be mistaken for anything but abject truth: “And for dinner.”

“Thanks for talking to me,” Carisi returns, as if Barba’s drunken confessions are on-par with a gorgeous Italian meal. 

He’s earnest all over, and Barba doubts nothing of his words or intentions. 

The doubt he harbors is his own, and it starts as a tiny crack at the very heart of the life he’s set for himself. Neat and proper, like a fine dining table. He reaches out and adjusts the silver.

He reaches out, and finds a cheek.

“Have a pleasant weekend, Detective.”


End file.
